Sep 30, 2012

IT companies have begun straight-up choosing rivals, with TP-Link being locked in a contest with Netgear for who makes the best and most affordable routers.

TP-Link is the one releasing a product this time around, called N600 Wireless Dual Band Router, and the core of its marketing strategy is “Netgear's product is more expensive than ours.” To elaborate, the press release points out that Netgear's N600 WNDR3400 ships for $79.00 in the USA, or 61-79 Euro, give or take. The TP-Link N600 Wireless Dual Band Router TL-WDR3500 is sold for $47, or 40% less. That's around 36.44-47 Euro. "This router provides cost-conscious consumers a chance to experience the advantages of dual band technology that they otherwise may not have been able to invest in," says Lewis Wu, director of Sales at TP-LINK USA. "No other competitor can beat our combination of the latest technology for the lowest everyday price."

N600 communicates over the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bandz, making it compatible with more or less every 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi device out there. It also has four 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports, one USB port, two external antennas and a wireless On/Off button, letting it behave like a regular switch. For older computers that lack Wi-Fi, TP-Link has the N600 Wireless Dual Band USB Adapter, TL-WDN3200, “a simple and affordable add-on.” We're not quite sure how $31.06 / 17.90 Euro / £19.99 qualifies as affordable though (the prices were taken from online retailers at the time of this article's writing). At any rate, there is one final asset of the TL-WDR3500 router, not the adapter, that we have to specify: the One Button Security Setup, which establishes a secure connection at a single press of the WPS button (Wi-Fi Protected Setup).

All in all, assuming that no adapter is needed, TP-Link's router is a more convenient buy than TRENDnet's TEW-712BR.